Napartulik (Eocene of Canada)

Where: Nunavut, Canada (79.9° N, 89.0° W: paleocoordinates 79.4° N, 49.2° W)

• coordinate stated in text

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Buchanan Lake Formation (Eureka Sound Group), Uintan (46.2 - 40.4 Ma)

• The stratigraphic occurrence of the specimen is from the Buchanan Lake Formation of the Eureka Sound Group; it was retrieved from the upper lignitic, coal-bearing member. It is of middle Eocene age (Ricketts and McIntyre, 1986), corresponding to the Uintan North American land mammal age (41.3–47.5 Ma) and the Lutetian Stage (Gradstein and Ogg, 1996).

Environment/lithology: "floodplain"; unlithified sandstone

• This site prominently exposes the upper- most of the four members of the Buchanan Lake Formation, namely an upper lignitic and coal-bearing unit. This unit contains in situ leaf litter mats that have produced vegetative and reproductive organs of gymnospermous and angiospermous swamp forest and associated taxa, including needle fascicles, leaves, cones, seeds, and wood. These plants lived in a local floodplain basin and were rapidly buried by fluvial systems and debris flows originating from the ancestral Princess Margaret Mountain Range a few kilometers to the west (Ricketts, 1991). Rapid burial by coarse alluvial deposits resulted in the pristine morphological preservation observed in the fossils, through elimination or reduction of oxygen to the entombed plants, and thus prevented microbial decay (Ricketts and McIntyre, 1986; Basinger, McIver, and LePage, 1988).

Size classes: macrofossils, mesofossils

Primary reference: C. C. Labandeira, B. A. LePage, and A. H. Johnson. 2001. A Dendroctonus bark engraving (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) from a middle Eocene Larix (Coniferales: Pinaceae): early or delayed colonization?. American Journal of Botany 88(11):2026-2039 [M. Clapham/J. Karr/M. Clapham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 139662: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Jered Karr on 15.02.2013

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Angiospermae
 Saxifragales - Cercidiphyllaceae
Cercidiphyllum sp. Siebold and Zuccarini 1846 katsura
 Fagales - Juglandaceae
Carya sp. Nuttall 1818 hickory
 Fagales - Betulaceae
Betula sp. Linnaeus 1753 birch
Alnus sp. Miller 1754 alder
 Coniferales - Cupressaceae
Glyptostrobus sp. Endlicher 1847 Chinese swamp cypress
Metasequoia sp. Miki 1941 dawn redwood
Chamaecyparis sp. Spach 1841 cypress
Pinopsida
 Pinales - Pinaceae
Pseudolarix sp. Gordon and Glendinning 1858
Tsuga sp. Carrière 1855
Keteleeria sp. Carrière 1866
Pinus sp. Linnaeus 1753 pine
Picea sp. Dietrich 1824 spruce
Insecta
 Coleoptera - Curculionidae
aff. Dendroctonus sp. Erichson 1836 bark beetle
bark engraving on branch of Larix altoborealis